


The Unsinkable Mrs. Blake

by rahleeyah



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28856088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rahleeyah/pseuds/rahleeyah
Summary: Written for the Jeanuary Big Bang on Tumblr, prompt is: Councilwoman Blake. A stranger comes into the Colonists', and hears an interesting story.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	The Unsinkable Mrs. Blake

_23 January 1991_

"Get you a drink?" The bartender asked. He was wiping down the bar with one hand and drawing a beer for another customer with the other, demonstrating a professional efficiency that spoke of a man who'd done this work his whole life, and probably always would.

"Vodka tonic, please," Matt answered.

The bartender handed the beer to the burly man at Matt's right, and then the fella disappeared, just like that Matt was alone at the bar. The Colonists' was an old fashioned sort of place, a colonial style behemoth in the middle of what had once been a mining town. This pub had probably been a private club once, Matt thought; there was a proper dining room for those who wanted to eat, a game room with pool tables and dart boards, a cluster of smaller rooms that could be rented out for private parties, and behind Matt the barroom opened into a field of comfortable booths and tables. It was open to the public these days, but as it was a Wednesday there was no one else sitting at the bar save for Matt.

"There's trivia in the next room over if you're interested," the bartender told him. "Starts in about twenty minutes."

"I'm all right, thanks," Matt answered, accepting the drink the bartender seemed to have magicked out of nowhere. He wasn't much interested in trivia; Matt was a collector of stories, and conversations were discouraged in the middle of a game.

"You're not from around here, are you?" The bartender asked. He seemed like a curious sort of fellow, about thirty, with keen brown eyes and an easy smile. A bar this big, in a historic building, in a town this small, Matt reckoned that bartender had stories aplenty to tell, and precious few folks to talk to at present. This might, he thought, turn out to be an interesting evening.

"What gave it away?" He asked lightly.

The bartender gestured towards his drink. "Most folks ask for whiskey or beer."

"Only the city boys ask for vodka tonic?" Matt joked.

"Something like that," the bartender answered. "What brings you to town?"

It was like stumbling into an old cowboy movie, Matt thought. Stranger comes to town and the local barkeep puts him to the question while goons palm their pistols in the corners, looking for trouble. Only this fella looked more curious than suspicious, at present, and Matt supposed that was for the good.

"I'm a writer," he said honestly. "I'm looking for a quiet place to settle down and get some work done. I've been visiting some of the old mining towns, talking to folks."

"If you're looking for stories, you've come to the right place. Everybody here has a story to tell."

Matt had long since discovered that was true the world over; every human heart carried a story inside it, and he had made a living coaxing them out.

"Who's the broad?" he asked, gesturing to the wall behind the bartender. Between the dusty bottles of liquor and neat stacks of clean glasses there was a framed photograph of a woman that had caught his eye the moment he'd walked in. From the style of her hair and the blouse she wore - and the faded colors of the photo - it looked as if the picture had been taken in the sixties. The woman in the photo looked to be about fifty, a little grey in the stiff set of her hair, wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but she was pretty, still, and the blue eyes in the photograph seemed to follow his every move, one eyebrow arched as if in challenge.

"That," the bartender said with a wide smile, "is Mrs. Blake."

She must have been one of the local legends, Matt thought, to have her picture hanging in the bar, to infuse the bartender's voice with such pride. A woman whose name everybody knew, whose story lived on, long after she left the world. And that, he thought, was exactly the sort of story he'd come to hear.

"You mind telling me about her?" Matt asked, reaching into his pocket for the battered notebook and pen he kept on his person at all times. "She looks interesting."

"You don't know the half of it," the bartender laughed. "My Uncle Cec could tell it better than I could. He used to run the Colonists' back when it was a private club."

So Matt's suspicions had been right; this beautiful building had once been a playground for the rich white men in town, barring anyone else from enjoying its comforts, lording their status over everyone in sight. Times had changed and most of those old private clubs had fallen by the way, and to Matt's mind that was no bad thing.

"She was on the council here in Ballarat, back in the day," the bartender said. There was a stool behind the bar and no other customers about, and so the man settled himself onto the stool, sighing as he took his weight off his feet. "She wasn't the first woman to have a seat on the council, but she was the one everybody remembers. Everybody in town knew Mrs. Blake, and she never backed down from a fight."

"She get into many fights?" Matt asked, surprised. In the photo she looked pretty and wealthy, too, probably, based on her clothes. She'd have to have some sort of money to run for council in the first place; politics was always about who you knew, and scrappy farmers didn't stand much of a chance against city money. A rich, pretty woman in the sixties couldn't have been too pugnacious, he thought, but maybe he was wrong. He rather hoped he was.

"A few," the bartender said, grinning. "She had all these notions about treating people equitably and opening doors to folks who were used to getting locked out. The old money types didn't take too kindly to that."

"No, I can't imagine they would."

"She's the one who made them open the Colonists' to women," the bartender continued. "You see, back in the day women were only allowed in the dining room, and even then only if they were escorted by a member. They couldn't be served without a man to pay. And those old boys on the council, they liked to sit in the reading room and drink their brandy and plot all sorts of things. Councilwoman Blake didn't think that was fair, them not letting her join their old boys' club."

 _Christ,_ Matt thought, he was glad things had changed. A bar without a woman in it seemed a bleak place indeed.

"She looks like she had money, though," he pointed out. "Surely her husband was a member, and could have gotten her inside."

"That's the thing," the bartender said, leaning towards him with a glint in his eye. "Her old man disappeared."

"What, like he just-"

"Just up and vanished. He was a Doctor, but he fancied himself a private investigator. He went off to Sydney chasing some case, and just - _poof -_ gone. Left his missus with a shit ton of money and nothing to do all day, so she went into politics."

Matt was scribbling so fast his hand was starting to cramp, his mind whirring with questions. This was, he thought, the best story he'd heard in a year, and he was determined to hear all of it.

"So how did she-"

"Uncle Cec knew Mrs. Blake from way back, and he was a real nice sort of bloke. He didn't like to cause trouble and he didn't like to turn people away. So one day Mrs. Blake comes in, sits herself down at the bar pretty as you please, and asks for a whiskey neat."

"And he gave it to her?"

"Course he did," the bartender said, grinning. "He liked her better than the members with their bullshit rules, and I think he just wanted to see what would happen. Of course, the blokes in this place went mental, and insisted she leave. They couldn't have an unaccompanied woman at the bar, and the politicians didn't want her overhearing their plans."

"So what did she do?"

"She left. But then she came back the next night, sat at the bar, and ordered a whiskey neat. And Uncle Cec gave it to her."

"She had balls," Matt said, laughing. He could picture it now, that pretty woman with her perfect hair, back straight as a post, sipping whiskey while the men fell all over themselves trying to throw her out.

"Every night for months she came in, and they threw her out. The police couldn't enforce the club rules, and the Chief Superintendent boarded in her house, anyway. He wasn't gonna get into a tussle with his landlady, and everybody knew it. The men started to grumble; their wives were giving them hell at home, because of course all the wives had voted for Mrs. Blake and drank tea with her on Saturday afternoons, and those fellas couldn't fight their wives _and_ a councilmember. But they couldn't just make an exception for her; it was either keep throwing her out, night after night, or let all the women in town come into the club. The women's rights movement was picking up steam in the cities, and the menfolk here in town started getting real nervous."

"So they decided to let women in?"

The bartender nodded. "She put a bug in their ears, and turned enough members to change the rules. It was still a private club, but they would allow women to be members. Only the Mayor, Bruce Beattie, he was pissed as hell about it, and submitted a ruling that Mrs. Blake not be allowed to seek membership. He held the vote one night when Mrs. Blake and most of the men she'd won round weren't present, and it passed. Women could enter, but not her."

"I guess she didn't take that one lying down," Matt said. Truth be told, he was sort of impressed. A woman on her own, fighting every powerful man in town, night after night, finally achieving her goal only to be locked out of the halls of privilege. Her picture was on the wall, and he supposed that must have meant she'd won, in the end.

"Oh, that's the best part," the bartender said, grinning. "She was a clever bird. The rules said one membership per household. So when they agreed to let women in, all the wives were automatically members, too. Her old man had been gone nearly two years and everyone had just about forgotten him, but she never let his membership lapse. Old Doctor Blake was still a dues paying member. There was no death certificate, no proof he was gone, and so the Blake household still held a membership, and she reckoned that meant she could come and go as she pleased. They couldn't get rid of her without causing a stink about her missing husband. Now, Beattie, he was a real slimy piece of work, and he didn't have any problems with that, but the rest of the members sorta liked old Doc Blake, and didn't want to give his wife too much grief."

"So she won, in the end?" It must have been, he thought, a bittersweet sort of victory. Mrs. Blake had gotten what she wanted, was finally allowed into the club, but it was all on account of her missing husband. The husband everybody in town thought was dead. She must not have thought that, though, or else why would she keep paying his dues at the club? After two years, she still must have been holding a torch for him, praying he'd find his way home, but surely he had never come. She must have wanted to celebrate her victory with him, but she had nothing waiting for her at home save for an empty bed and the Chief Superintendent. It was a tragic sort of victory, to Matt's mind.

"That's the thing. Beattie, he decides to petition to have the Doc declared dead. The man'd been gone two years, and there's all sorts of legal things involved when a person passes, and Mrs. Blake hadn't done any of it. He says it isn't right, and gets the process started."

"Christ, that poor woman."

"Don't go feeling sorry for her just yet. A few days before Doctor Blake's death was going to be made official - and Mrs. Blake was going to be locked out of the club for good - the bastard shows up! Two years without a sign of him and suddenly he's back in town, and when Mrs. Blake comes into the club for her nightly whiskey, he's right there with her, ordering the same." The bartender told his story with relish, knowing well how miraculous it sounded, and seeming to enjoy every second of it. Matt couldn't blame him; he was enjoying it, too.

"Where the hell had he been?" Matt asked, incredulous. Like the rest of the town, he'd thought Doctor Blake was long dead, that his wife had just been too in love with him to admit the truth of his passing, and he'd never imagined for a second the bloke would have come back. Where could a man disappear to, for _two years,_ in the sixties, and just come walking back like nothing had changed? And _Christ,_ what must his wife have thought? The man must have gotten the bollocking of a lifetime, Matt thought.

"Oh, everybody in town has a different answer to that question. You could ask ten different people and get fifteen different stories."

"What would your Uncle Cec say?" Matt had a good memory for names, and he'd written that one down. That Cec, he must have been the keeper of the town's secrets, working so intimately with the elite for so many years, for so long that his nephew had taken up his post at the Colonists'. If anyone knew the truth, that old man probably did.

"Doctor Blake had a daughter living in China. Things were dangerous in that part of the world in those days. Uncle Cec said Blake went to get his daughter and bring her family home, and things got complicated. But he said it all worked out in the end, and the daughter's family settled in Melbourne, and Doctor Blake lived in Ballarat for the rest of his life. And Mrs. Blake sat on the council for the next fifteen years."

"A happy ending, then," Matt said. He'd always been partial to happy endings himself, even if this one was almost too incredible to be believed. "I'll drink to that," he raised his glass towards the photo of Mrs. Blake in toast, and then took a long sip, thinking hard. There was a novel in this, he could feel it. A good one. He'd try to ferret a few more details out of the locals - not too many, though, because too much truth could take the shine off a story - and then he'd barricade himself in a room for a few months and churn the whole thing out. His editor would be ecstatic.

The sound of a footfall behind him caught his attention, and he turned to watch as a woman made her way to the bar. It was hard to place her age; her hair was steel grey and her face was lined with age, her body thin and yet still strong looking. Late sixties maybe, he thought, or seventies if she kept herself fit. Her back was straight and her walk was smooth, her body unbowed by age. She wore black slacks and black pumps, and a cream-colored sweater, her clothes far nicer than the rest of the patrons of the bar. She must have been pretty in her youth, he thought, and some of that beauty lingered still. She had clear, bright blue eyes, and a grin that seemed almost mischievous.

"Evening, Luke," she said as she perched primly on a barstool to Matt's left. "How's the family?"

The bartender was already moving; he'd grabbed a clean glass, and a bottle of whiskey from the top shelf.

"Can't complain, Mrs. Blake," he answered.

Matt's mouth fell open; he couldn't have been more shocked if this lady had jumped up on the bar and started dancing. Mrs. Blake, in the flesh, still alive and kicking, drinking her whiskey neat at the bar. Did she still come in every night? He wondered. It had taken a hell of a fight to get her into the Colonists' in the first place, and the thought that she was still determined to enjoy a drink here, decades later, it was...incredible, he thought. Magnificent. Delightful.

"This one's on me, Luke," Matt told the bartender, reaching for his wallet.

Mrs. Blake turned to look at him; she was smiling, but that eyebrow was raised at him in question. Just like in the photo on the wall behind Luke, she seemed to be weighing him up, challenging him.

"That's very kind of you," she said.

Matt handed his money to Luke, and Luke handed the whiskey to Mrs. Blake, and she raised her glass to him in silent toast.

"Mrs. Blake," Matt said, turning to her eagerly with his pen in hand. "My name is Matt Holland, and I'm a writer. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."


End file.
